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The Week in Housing: Prime minister urged to intervene in remediation process amid NAO review of social housing sector
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The Week in Housing: Prime minister urged to intervene in remediation process amid NAO review of social housing sector #UKhousingGood afternoon.
The prime minister has been urged to “intervene personally” to tackle a building safety crisis that is threatening Britain’s housing market.
Almost a decade since the Grenfell Tower fire killed 72 people, End Our Cladding Scandal (EOCS) has made a direct appeal to Sir Keir Starmer to address what it described as “glacial progress, a blame game and buck-passing” in the remediation process.
The plea comes as the value of flats in one London block has fallen by £100,000 because of a five-year delay to work. This left owners unable to sell their homes and forced them to cover a sixfold increase in insurance premiums on top of rising mortgage costs and service fees.
The EOCS appeal comes after an opposition peer earlier this week proposed to change the law so that more leaseholders are protected from the cost of fixing building safety defects.
Baroness Pinnock, the Liberal Democrats’ housing spokesperson, set out a suite of changes to building safety laws in a private members’ bill. A key part of the proposals is extending legal protections for the cost of fixing building safety defects to residents living in buildings of any height.
Changes are also due in Wales, where the government has proposed measures to protect leaseholders from unfair remediation costs, in its first consultation on implementing recently passed building safety legislation.
In Scotland, five more developers have legally committed to fund cladding remediation work on buildings they developed.
Also this week, the National Audit Office (NAO) launched a probe into the quality of England’s social housing, including the effectiveness of recent reforms.
The NAO has made several interventions in the sector in recent years, including a scathing review of a government-backed energy efficiency programme. The government has proposed a new consumer protection service to strengthen oversight of the retrofit industry following the previous failures on this programme.
The NAO plans to publish the findings of its latest review in late 2026 or early 2027.
The policy probe comes after the government published an impact assessment of the planned Social Housing Bill, which estimates a net gain of 18,000 social homes over the next decade.
Ahead of Reform UK being trounced by Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, homelessness charity Shelter condemned Reform’s plans to ban foreign nationals from being allocated social housing as “racist and morally wrong”.
Speaking after his victory in the early hours of this morning, Mr Burnham said Labour has a “final chance to change”, with his win paving the way for him to challenge Sir Keir for the party leadership.
Other big stories from the sector this week included the former chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing and the boss of Peabody joining more than a dozen sector leaders to receive an award as part of the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours.
Large housing association L&Q completed the sale of its private rented sector business to an investment fund for just over £1bn as it seeks to focus on social housing.
In Northern Ireland, one sheltered housing provider must deliver four biodiversity schemes per year as the condition for receiving a £20m sustainability-linked loan.
And the first homes to be delivered under a new affordable rent programme backed by the Northern Irish government will be available this summer.
The mayor of London also hopes to ramp up development in the capital, as it launches a long-awaited City Hall developer with a £100m investment in a 7,000-home regeneration of a site in Silvertown, east London.
Also in London, Southwark Council is looking for a developer to build and run key worker housing at two sites in Rotherhithe, with an estimated value of up to £160m.
In one of several insight articles published this week, Inside Housing explained what you need to know about housing in London – from development to homelessness and what the changing political situation might mean.
We also joined a fact-finding tour as part of a major inquiry into regeneration and how it could drive growth in the North, and spoke to Sheffield City Council about how had its regulatory notice lifted after resolving serious failings over gas safety in its homes.
At the start of the week, Inside Housing revealed that house builder Vistry is offering staff voluntary redundancies to preserve cash as it waits for the Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) to begin.
The wait for funding comes after the National Housing Federation previously urged the chancellor to bring forward funding for the government’s £39bn SAHP, warning that scaling back bids now could stall the sector just as it is ready to build.
For-profit providers were promised a “welcome boost” under the new SAHP, but in an insight article this week, they set out why engaging with the programme has “not been the easiest”.
Have a good weekend.
Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing
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